Socrates

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Nothing is to be preferred before justice.

Philebus was saying that enjoyment and pleasure and delight, and the class of feelings akin to them, are a good to every living being, whereas I contend, that not these, but wisdom and intelligence and memory, and their kindred, right opinion and true reasoning, are better and more desirable than pleasure

Well I am certainly wiser than this man. It is only too likely that neither of us has any knowledge to boast of; but he thinks that he knows something which he does not know, whereas I am quite conscious of my ignorance. At any rate it seems that I am wiser than he is to this small extent, that I do not think that I know what I do not know.

He is rich who is content with the least; for contentment is the wealth of nature.

As to marriage or celibacy, let a man take which course he will, he will be sure to repent.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large mattertis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

Giving up smoking is the easiest thing in the world. I know because I’ve done it thousands of times.

Letting go is not giving up.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

As soon as there is life there is danger.

The intellectual man requires a fine bait; the sots are easily amused. But everybody is drugged with his own frenzy, and the pageant marches at all hours, with music and banner and badge.

The characteristic of genuine heroism is its persistency. All men have wandering impulses, fits and starts of generosity. But when you have resolved to be great, abide by yourself, and do not weakly try to reconcile yourself with the world. The heroic cannot be the common, nor the common the heroic.

There are many humorous things in the world; among them, the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.

Mental toughness is spartanism with qualities of sacrifice, self-denial, dedication. It is fearlessness, and it is love.

At the end of the day, life is about being happy being who you are.

Our manners have been corrupted by communication with the saints.